I am now officially retired and I’m loving it. I’ve been keeping busy. We’ve been doing a lot of work on our home: new roof on our garage, pavers for our front walk, a pool, and we recently finished a kitchen renovation, which was to be completed by Christmas, but wasn’t.  But that is a whole other story.

As previously mentioned, my oncologist said I could get my Mediport removed as I had a clean PETScan.  I made an appointment for the surgery for July 12th, after we came back from vacationing in Florida.  As I don’t like general anesthesia, I asked the surgeon if he could do the surgery under local anesthesia.  The surgery was supposed to be pretty quick.  A half hour at most in a surgical center.  I forgot that you get strapped down during surgery and to ease my mind, I asked if the doctor could play some music, which he did.  There was a nurse and an anesthesiologist in the room as well.  The doctor injected some local anesthetic and then began the surgery to remove the Port.  I could smell my flesh burning as he used the cautery.  It was all going well until he started tugging on the reservoir of the port to try to remove catheter.  The catheter which went under my collarbone, was threaded into my vena cava.  The doctor tugged and tugged and couldn’t get remove the catheter.  He was digging under my collarbone for a bit.  Though I didn’t have much pain, there was a lot of pressure.  It felt like my heart and ribs were going to pulled out of my chest.  I started freaking out and thought I was going to pass out.  The anesthesiologist gave me a sedative to chill me.  I told the doctor that he had to stop.  The doctor stopped the surgery.  He said that he didn’t have the expertise nor was the surgical center the place to try to remove the Mediport in case anything went wrong.  I appreciated that the doctor knew his limits.  He didn’t want to take the chance that harm would be caused within the central venous system.

A fluoroscopy revealed that the tip of the catheter became bent possibly from the radiation treatment I received.  The catheter may also have been stuck to the side of the vein in scar tissue.

After this failed attempt at removal, the doctor said I could still do my regular activities, however, Charles and I were wary.  We were afraid something might move and cause problems.  So I took things real easy.  My chest was also bothering me from all the tugging and digging.

I was referred to an Interventional Radiologist to see if he would have better luck with the removal process.  After going through the WTC Health Program, I finally had an appointment for surgery on July 27th.  I went to the surgical center and was prepped for the surgery.  The thought of the doctor was if he could not remove the catheter from the chest, he would go through a vein in my groin to try to remove the catheter via that route.  I was given a local anesthetic and a sedative and the doctor opened the incision that my previous doctor had made.  The doctor removed the reservoir of the Mediport and then began pulling on the catheter.  He began tugging so hard I thought  I was going to die.  I told the doctor he was “killing me!”  I once again felt like my ribs and heart were going to be pulled out of my chest.  The doctor also made an additional incision to try to remove the catheter with no success.  I was given more sedative and the doctors in the surgical room took a step back to try to figure out a course of action.  The doctor inserted a guide wire through the catheter into the vena cava and attempted to remove the catheter but this was unsuccessful.  The doctor then decided to thread an angioplasty balloon into the catheter and several inflations were made within the catheter to dilate the tract.  The catheter was then able to be removed.  Thank God!!

A few weeks later, I was finally able to get back to my regular activities.  It was a relief to not have to continue getting my Port flushed on a regular basis.  Every time I got the Port flushed it reminded me of my chemotherapy treatments.  I was glad to be done with it.

I retired on October 21, 2017 after 30 years, 9 months, and 1 day.